


Black Serpent

by Euterpe



Category: Original Work, 鬼滅の刃 | Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Anime)
Genre: Ancient China, F/F, Fantasy, Monster Hunting Agency, Monsters, Romance if you squint, Supernatural Elements, Women Being Awesome, Women in the Military, Wuxia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28033647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euterpe/pseuds/Euterpe
Summary: During the fictional Chinese dynasty of Wan, once-human Monsters roam the land terrorizing the populace. Luckily, the women-only Monster Extermination Agency, known colloquially as the "Flower Serpents" for their perfumed flower pouches and their snake-inspired hunting technique, is protecting the public as best as it can. Their mission is simple: exterminate the Monsters, minimize damage, and ensure nobody else gets turned into a cannibalistic beast.Unknown to the Agency, someone else is helping them kill Monsters as well. This mysterious traveler, a former Serpent who calls herself "The Badger", harbors a secret: she is the very thing she had sworn to eliminate.(A.k.a. I watched Demon Slayer and wondered what it would be like if a. it was set in China and b. Nezuko's character had been a slayer from the beginning)
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character





	1. Chapter 1

If anyone asked for her name, she would tell them to call her "The Badger."

She was a woman of average height, although no one could tell she was a woman until she spoke. No matter the weather, she wore a wide-brimmed straw hat that shielded her eyes, and black cloth pulled over her nose covered the rest of her face, but it wasn't as if most people got close enough to see her face anyways. The most striking thing about her was the shaggy black cloak that billowed from her shoulders to her ankles, effectively hiding her slim frame and giving her a rather round silhouette, her hair in a single braid like a chunky tail down her back. That was why some children she encountered in the fields ten summers ago had called her Mr. Badger—they had watched her dark, stout figure waddle down the footpath from five _li_ away. The way the children's grubby fingers grasped the fur on her coat while asking if she liked to steal eggs amused her to no end, so she adopted the nickname with a laugh and gave them the rest of her candied walnuts.

The Badger's strange outfit was an obvious indication of someone who didn't want their identity discovered. It was also obvious no one told her that her mysterious outsider get-up made her all the more conspicuous. She wore the heavy cloak even in the hottest summers, drawing heads and at least a few whispers from locals who felt like they were sweating ten times more just by looking at her. It was a good thing most people whose paths she crossed had more pressing things to worry about—it was easy to forget a strange traveler when your crops were withering, or worse, when your neighbor turned into a Monster.

It was on one of those hot summer days that the Badger found herself haggling with a butcher in a town almost big enough to be a city. Locals jostled her as they pushed through the crowded street, which was permeated with the stench of horse droppings and body odor. A fruit hawker hollered in a tired voice about his buy-one-get-one deal every other minute.

The Badger berated herself for her mistake. She was in a dangerous position, and if she had just eaten yesterday near that farm, she wouldn't have resorted to purchasing meat from an overpriced stall in a marketplace teeming with people. Now she would have to spend nearly a fourth of her money on the worst cut of the pig, and even then it probably wouldn't be enough.

The edges of her vision began to turn red. It was time to give in. With a grimace that the butcher couldn't see, she counted out the coins and handed them to the frowning man. Her eyes tracked his every move as he weighed the slab of pork—he was definitely pushing down on the scale, damn it—cut a piece off, weighed it again, and wrapped it in cloth. She was shaking by the time he gave her the meat, crudely packaged like a disappointing gift, barely bigger than the width of her two hands.

She had nothing more to say to him. She spun around, intending to slink away, when suddenly a piercing shriek sounded down the street. A rush of bodies—someone shoved her shoulder from behind, and the meat tumbled out of her hands in slow motion, only to be lost in the midst of scrambling feet as townspeople screaming "Monster!" stampeded like cattle down the road. The Badger watched in silence as her pork disappeared from her. She wanted to cry.

Clenching her teeth, the Badger turned towards the direction people were running from. She breathed in the smell of their panic, their fear, their mad energy pulsing through the oppressive summer heat. With a grunt, she pushed her way upstream against the bodies. She didn't have to go very far before she saw—there.

The Monsters. Two of them, both young men. By the ragged state of their clothes, the Badger guessed it had been a few days, maybe even weeks, since they were turned. The tell-tale black marks traveled like thick veins up their necks and their sullen cheeks and their pale, clawed hands. Their hair was loose and wild, hanging like vines over the body of their victim, the hawker whom the Badger heard selling fruit five minutes ago. The Monsters must have been hiding in a cart or an urn before striking, or maybe they had jumped onto the street from an adjacent building. The Badger would have known they were there, earlier, if she hadn't been so distracted.

Soon the Monsters would finish with the hawker and turn their attention towards new victims. There was no way the townspeople would be able to outrun them, no way they could hide. The Monsters could smell you from ten _li_ away. They would be onto you before you had a chance to scream.

The Badger drew her sword from its scabbard on her waist. Within seconds, she was close enough to slice into the taller one, and she brought her sword arm across her body—

The pungent fragrance of osmanthus flowers, approaching fast. The Badger stiffened. Immediately, she withdrew, vanishing into a hastily vacated stall that was packed with incense. She held her breath against the assault of smells and waited.

A glint of steel and a soft exhale. A young woman in a burgundy jacket vaulted off a rooftop from the east, descending sword-first upon the Monsters in a front somersault. Her form was a little off, but she managed to cut clean through the taller Monster as she landed. The Badger guessed these Monsters had never encountered a Serpent before. They wouldn't have been caught so unaware otherwise.

Without the element of surprise, the young woman's battle with the shorter Monster did not end so quickly. She needed to work on her stamina—after barely a few swings, the woman's attacks and dodges became more sluggish. At one point, she couldn't hop away fast enough, and the Monster's claw scratched her left arm. The tang of fresh blood spilled into the hot air, mixing with the smells of death and osmanthus. 

The young woman straightened. Suddenly, she darted into a wooden stall behind her that was covered by an off-white cloth, closer to where the Badger was hiding. The Monster followed, snarling. The woman slashed at the wooden supports and leapt out. The overhead cloth fell, trapping the Monster, who flailed his arms. The woman drew back her sword arm. A few quick stabs into the squirming mass, and the Monster stopped moving.

The Serpent stood still. She was breathing heavily, her sword poised. The sash wrapped around her military-style bun was green. Just a regular agent, then. She probably hadn't even learned to sniff out Monsters.

After half a minute, the woman's breaths evened out, and she relaxed. She returned her sword to its sheath on her back and turned around. She was grinning, her features foxy and jovial. 

Townspeople emerged from various hiding spots, appraising the scene of carnage and the young woman who stood triumphant. "Goodness, Flower Serpent," a middle-aged lady said, "you've saved us all."

The Serpent laughed sheepishly, as if she'd just been praised for memorizing a poem instead of killing two Monsters. "Just doing my job, ma'am," she replied easily. "We should find everyone else who's died or injured and see that they're taken care of."

A group of townspeople lifted the hawker's corpse away. They offered food and jewelry to the Serpent, but she refused each one, as was protocol. As the Serpent moved her arms to help lift some debris, her injury split wider, and she winced. _She should get that treated_ , the Badger thought idly, but she knew this woman's type, and it was probably to slap on a bunch of bandages and forget about it.

Once the Serpent had moved far away and more townspeople began returning to the street, the Badger slipped out from her hiding spot. She was about to eat her own tongue. Miraculously, she spotted the meat she bought before the chaos, lying some distance away from the butcher's stall and relatively untouched. The Badger hurried towards it. Everything would still be alright—

Everything was not alright, because a dirty brown dog that appeared almost out of nowhere had gotten to the meat first. It swiped up the package in its yellow jaws and trotted into an alleyway with its tail upright, like it deserved nothing less. For the second time that day, the Badger wanted to cry.

She would not lose to a dog. She moved her legs faster and followed it deep into the alleyway, which was dusty and hidden. Perfect. There were no humans around, only the dog and its pork and the Badger, advancing faster than the mundane eye could see.

The Badger pulled down her face covering as she towered over the oblivious dog. Black, vein-like marks extended from up her neck onto her cheeks, framing her hungry, sharp-toothed grin like a bush of thorns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know Mandarin pronunciations probably wouldn't be a thing in a Tang-Dynasty-inspired China, but I'd like to think that the Badger is known as 獾 (huān) within the story.
> 
> A li in the Tang Dynasty was around 1/3 of a kilometer, or like 1/5 of a mile.


	2. Chapter 2

The Badger was in a village, a two-day walk south of the previous town, when the old blacksmith sharpening her sword warned her about more Monsters. "Three of them, last I heard, in the hills twenty minutes west," he said without taking his eyes off the job. His gray whiskers bounced as he licked his lips. "Just yesterday Liang, the apothecary, his kid was taken. Only eight years old, the poor boy."

The Badger nodded. "It's hard, losing someone to the Monsters," she said.

The blacksmith paused. "You have experience?"

"You could say that."

"Hm." The old man returned to sharpening. Other than the _shink_ , _shink_ , _shink_ of the sword on the whetstone and the blacksmith's occasional coughs, the road outside his shop was silent. Several flies took an interest in the Badger's coat, which was caked in dried bits of mud and blood. The Badger shook her head vigorously, imagining herself as a horse flicking her ponytail to chase them away. It did very little to that end. In fact, they buzzed even closer to her face. She was about to slap her own cheek and make a fool out of herself when the blacksmith grunted.

"Your sword's very nice, young lady," he commented. He was polishing it now. "Looks expensive."

"It was."

"Who made this for you?"

"A smith near the capital, a while ago." The Badger paused. "It was my father's," she lied.

The old man appraised the black snake coiled around the sword's guard. The fangs in its open mouth were as sharp as on the day they were carved. "I'll say," he said. "I haven't seen this style since _my_ father was still making swords."

The Badger smiled, even though the man wouldn't be able to see it. "Do you know if there's a stream or a pond somewhere around here?" she asked him.

The blacksmith's dry laugh sounded more like a cough. "In the hills to the west, actually. But don't worry, a Flower Serpent came earlier today. She's probably dealing with it right now, you'll be okay."

The Badger closed her eyes and tilted her head back. She supposed she wasn't getting a bath anytime soon.

The Badger had barely begun stepping southward when she caught a whiff of osmanthus and freshly spilled blood on the west wind. And Monsters. Four of them.

She groaned.

Zhang Qingshu was going to die. She had been close to death many times before, but she knew this was the day she would finally die, or get turned into a Monster, which was as good as dead anyway. She wondered who would come put her down if she was turned. She hoped it was Wenli, and if she bit Wenli when she came for her—well, wouldn't that be sad.

Qingshu leapt to another branch, barely dodging the Monster hot on her trail. She was told there were three, which she could almost handle on a good day when she didn't have an infected wound on her left arm, but there were four—a little boy in addition to two women and a man, which she unfortunately found out when the boy tore into her right thigh minutes ago. It hurt so much it felt like her leg would fall off. At least she managed to sever an arm of the Monster closest to her now, one of the women, but it was relentless in its pursuit. Qingshu jumped to another tree. She felt woozy.

The remaining arm of the closest Monster shot towards her. Qingshu lurched to the left and brought her sword down, slicing through the Monster's torso. It screamed, but Qingshu wasn't there to watch it die. She had lost balance, and she tumbled loudly through the branches. Her back met the forest floor with a thump that brought tears to her eyes. She moaned quietly.

She heard the three other Monsters crash through the foliage and land on the ground. She turned her head, saw their feet advancing. She changed her mind—she hoped the Agency sent someone with a higher rank than Wenli to put her down. She thought she deserved that much.

Qingshu's eyelids drooped. Maybe the blood loss would get to her before the Monsters did.

She felt the first Monster's breath hot on her face. But then—a spurt of wetness, a thump, and no breath at all. She forced her eyes open.

A great black, shaggy figure loomed over her. A bear? No, it was wearing a rice farmer's hat, and it was holding a sword—a sword slicked purple with Monster blood. Qingshu fought to keep her eyes open. She vaguely processed that the three Monsters were dead now.

The bear sheathed its sword. It looked at Qingshu with piercing dark eyes, then turned away. A person, not a bear. A person who was walking down the mountain, who was leaving her.

Qingshu was slipping. She struggled once more to open her eyes. The person-who-was-not-a-bear had turned back, was coming to get her. 

Qingshu closed her eyes and drifted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zhang Qingshu = 张晴舒 (zhāng qíng shū)


	3. Chapter 3

Zhang Qingshu woke up aching. She felt like she'd been beaten with ten thousand bamboo rods, and the gashes on her arm and leg were so itchy she wanted to scratch her skin off. Her unbound hair was matted with sweat against her forehead. But she was alive, and she was in a bed, and she was bandaged. And was that—?

"Guo Wenli," she croaked, then cringed at the sound of her voice.

The woman in the navy blue jacket who had been dozing at the foot of Qingshu's bed blinked awake. "Zhang Qingshu," she acknowledged wearily.

"You could sound happier to see me," Qingshu said.

Wenli shrugged. "You were as good as dead for the past five days, according to the apothecary. I've only been here four hours and I'm already tired of looking at your face."

"Hey, I bet you were sleeping for the whole four hours."

"Like I said, I was tired."

Qingshu smiled. "Did the apothecary tell you what happened to me?"

Guo Wenli closed her eyes. She looked like she would fall asleep again. "The cuts on your leg and arm are pretty bad. The arm's infected—he said you're lucky you still have it. Your back's pretty bruised up too."

"Did he say anything about the person who brought me here?"

"I don't know, ask him yourself." Wenli then stopped talking, and her breaths became more even as nodded off. 

"Hey, Guo Wenli," Qingshu said, mildly annoyed. It wouldn't be unlike Wenli to fall asleep in the middle of their conversation.

Wenli had joined the Monster Extermination Agency at the same time as Qingshu did, six years ago, when Qingshu was 16 and Wenli was 15. She was slightly shorter than Qingshu, with downturned eyes and a brown birthmark on her left cheek. Her weapon of choice was a _guandao_ that was nearly as tall and weighed half as much as she did—Qingshu would know, she'd tried to lift it before. Qingshu couldn't see where the _guandao_ was right now, but she figured it was on the floor near her bed somewhere.

They were in a cramped, nondescript room with stone walls. Next to a door on the right side, a small window let in the golden light of late afternoon. The bed and the chair Wenli occupied took up most of the floor space, in addition to a clay pail in one corner and a pile of timber in the other. Two sets of robes hung on the far wall—one of them was long and gray, and the other was Qingshu's jacket, faintly copper in spots where bloodstains must have been. The room smelled bitter, like herbal medicine stewed over fire. 

Someone knocked twice on the door. A man who looked to be in his late 30's hurried in, carrying three jars of what Qingshu guessed was balm. She pushed herself to sit up, her back and arms protesting. The exertion made her light-headed. 

"Good, you're awake," the man said. He set the jars down on the windowsill. "Please don't exert yourself. How are you feeling?"

Qingshu tried not to grimace. "Sore, but alive thanks to you, sir. If there's anything I can do to repay you, please..."

"No need to worry," the apothecary replied, "I was paid to look after you by the lady who brought you in. I'm not the one you should be thanking—if it wasn't for her, who knows what might have happened to you?"

Qingshu sat up straighter. "That lady, can you tell me what her name was? What she looked like?"

The apothecary stroked his short goatee. "Hm, she was dressed rather unusually. A straw hat and a big black cloak. I couldn't see her face—it was covered, I think. She didn't tell me her name."

"Oh." Qingshu resisted a sigh. "Thank you anyway. I'm sure I still wouldn't be here without your help."

When the apothecary smiled, he reminded Qingshu, briefly, of her own father before he had died. "Happy to do whatever I can to help the Flower Serpents. You've been working so hard to protect us, after all," he said. "I'll have my wife come in to reapply medicine and change your bandages."

Qingshu nodded and thanked him again.

The man deliberated. "Just one more thing," he added. His face was grim. "When you were in the hills, my youngest...did you happen to see him? He's eight years old, should have been wearing a white jacket."

She looked at the wound on her leg, still wrapped in bandages. "I'm sorry," she whispered. Shame prickled up her throat. "I couldn't save him."

"Ah." A deep crease formed between the apothecary's eyebrows. "That's—that's alright. It must have been difficult." He turned towards the door. "Please don't tell my wife about this."

"Sir, pardon my rudeness," Qingshu said, "but don't you think she deserves to—"

"Please."

Qingshu swallowed. Her mouth was completely dry. "Of course."

She glanced at Wenli, who didn't even lift her head.

At a farmer's house 500 _li_ away, the Badger pierced herself with a needle as she struggled to mend the family's worn shoes. A bead of purple blood coalesced on her fingertip. She sighed and wiped it on the inside of her cloak.

The Badger had spent what was left of her money on that Serpent's treatment, and since she always felt uneasy with an empty wallet, she had approached this old farmer with the intention of hoeing his fields or gathering firewood in exchange for some coins. She had refrained from speaking, instead resorting to gestures—villagers tended to be uncomfortable about hiring a woman to perform manual labor, even one as menacing as the Badger—but the old farmer was a widower with two adult sons who were unmarried. What they needed was not an extra pair of hands in the field but someone to mend seasons worth of battered clothes. 

In her years wandering the empire, the Badger had picked up a variety of skills in a multitude of temporary jobs. Most of them required strength and stamina, in which she surpassed any human—she's wielded as many axes and hammers as oars and shoulder poles. Beyond that, she's been a baker, scribe, herb collector, and yes, she's even had to learn needlework. That was how she found herself sitting on the dirt floor of the farmer's musty hut, eyes straining against the waning sunlight. She had immense respect for women who spent their lives patching holes and spinning thread, embroidering beautiful patterns onto jackets and shoes. The Badger may have had rudimentary knowledge of needlework, but she was never able to successfully tackle the beast of embroidery.

Even though a needle has managed to draw more of her blood in the past few days than a sword has in the past few decades, this was not such a bad arrangement. The farmer and his sons left her alone during the day, and they never asked her questions. In the night, she slipped into the nearby woods to hunt deer or foxes. She would be back in the morning, greeting the farmer with a curt nod and continuing where she left off.

As the monotony of her task caught up with her, the Badger began thinking about the dumb green-rank Serpent who smelled like osmanthus—and she was completely justified for thinking the Serpent was dumb. The kid had an infected wound and attacked four Monsters when she could barely even handle two. It's like she was looking to die. 

The Badger was about to leave her there. The Monsters were dealt with, and none of them had bitten the Serpent, so there was no chance she could have been turned. But something in the Badger twitched at the sight of the girl lying supine at the base of a tree with hair wisping out of her bun, gripping her sword tightly despite being on the verge of consciousness. Her blood was nearly the same color as her burgundy jacket, and if the air didn't reek of iron and gore it would have been difficult to see how the fabric was soaked through. The Serpent couldn't have been much older than 20, but her expression was painfully resigned.

It reminded the Badger of a time very long ago, a Serpent on the edge of defeat, waiting for death— _begging_ for it. The snow saturated with reds and purples, like ink spilling over a painting. An arrow aimed between the eyes.

The Badger pricked herself with the needle again. She looked down at her hands, at her blade-like fingernails and the black marks lacing up her wrists. She let the purple blood trickle down her palm before wiping it away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guo Wenli = 郭文莉 (guō wén lì)


End file.
